Stability of contact discontinuity for the Boltzmann equation

The Boltzmann equation which describes the time evolution of a large number of particles through the binary collision in statistics physics has close relation to the systems of fluid dynamics, that is, Euler equations and Navier-Stokes equations. As for a basic wave pattern to Euler equations, we consider the nonlinear stability of contact discontinuities to the Boltzmann equation. Even though the stability of the other two nonlinear waves, i.e., shocks and rarefaction waves has been extensively studied, there are few stability results on the contact discontinuity because unlike shock waves and rarefaction waves, its derivative has no definite sign, and decays slower than a rarefaction wave. Moreover, it behaves like a linear wave in a nonlinear setting so that its coupling with other nonlinear waves reveals a complicated interaction mechanism. Based on the new definition of contact waves to the Boltzmann equation corresponding to the contact discontinuities for the Euler equations, we succeed in obtaining the time asymptotic stability of this wave pattern with a convergence rate. In our analysis, an intrinsic dissipative mechanism associated with this profile is found and used for closing the energy estimates. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.